


Captivity

by elphabaoftheopera



Category: Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Genre: Captivity, Fear, Horror, Prison, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29160282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elphabaoftheopera/pseuds/elphabaoftheopera
Summary: After months behind bars, Madame Morrible seems to have adjusted to captivity as well as possible. However, when strange happenings begin occurring in her cell and something wicked comes her way to pay her visits in the night, that may just start to change. (Musicalverse One-Shot)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Captivity

**Author's Note:**

> Content Advisory: Terror / Suspense / Imprisonment / Implied sensory overload / Prejudice (towards fictional demographic)

> " **Madame, have you ever considered how you'd fare in captivity? Prison. Personally, I can't imagine you'll hold up very well."**
> 
> **-Glinda the Good, Wicked**
> 
> " **If they want a monster so badly, they ought to be provided by one."**
> 
> ― **Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace**

" _I'll get you my pretty…"_

Madame Morrible squinted her eyes open in the middle of the night, pressed her dry lips into a frown, and smoothed a wrinkled hand over the thin white fuzz growing feebly from her scalp.

She could not recall her dream, but she felt as if she'd had it before.

The outline of her dwelling slowly came into view as her eyes began adjusting to the dark. After months of being locked away, she knew every detail of her tiny domain including— _and_ limited to—her creaky cot, her facilities, and her stack of musty books. Three solid stone walls with no windows kept her contained and the iron bars that made up the fourth wall provided a view into the prison corridor which was lit by greenish lanterns during the day—and lit by nothing at night.

The corridor contained plentiful cells on both sides of the hall and, while the cells had been nearly all occupied with Animals and the rebels that had aided and abetted them whilst Morrible had been in power, they were now sparsely populated. Short term prisoners came and went, but while the wing had perhaps twenty cells in all, it currently held only two inhabitants. An insufferable Munchkin woman named Urit, and Morrible herself.

Morrible had never laid eyes on Urit for their cells were distanced apart. While Morrible could often hear Urit singing horrendibly or coughing up a lung during daylight hours, she chose never to speak with her. Urit was a criminal and a lowlife, and Madame Morrible did not associate with criminals and lowlifes.

 _Drip_.

Morrible gritted her teeth as a bothersome sound reached her ears. Her stiff joints popped and cracked as she sat up and pressed her feet to the stone floor to stand from her cot. Eyes still not fully adjusted; she took a few careful steps towards the left corner of her cell where an incessant dripping plinked rhythmically into a tin bucket. She turned her nose upwards to glare at the ceiling. _Drip_. She held out a wrinkled hand out to catch a droplet. _Drip_. She scowled as cool water splashed onto her open palm. _Drip_.

"Vexatious rain…" she grimaced. _Drip_. That sound was certain to keep her up all hours of the night. _Drip_.

As if it were an old reflex that she could not restrain, Morrible flourished her arm, pointed a crooked finger towards the damp corner of the ceiling, and thrust all of her energy forward with the intention of halting the rain. She felt a tingling in her pointer finger…but it soon fizzled and dissipated.

 _Drip_.

This was only the latest in Morrible's unsuccessful attempts to adjust the weather. The cement was too thick and her cell too deep underground for her powers to hope to reach, let alone change, the atmosphere. That had not stopped her from trying. She had not seen natural light in weeks due to the fact that the last time she'd been taken outside her jailers had not appreciated the little display of inclement hail and sleet she'd conjured to throw them off guard. Since then, her outdoor privileges had been revoked and she had no sense of what the weather even was. _Drip_. Except for that drip, of course. _Drip._

She scratched at the dry skin on her arm as she paced, trying in vain to ignore the pesky sound. _Drip_. If she could only see the sky. _Drip_. Then perhaps she could control it. _Drip_. But she could not control the weather down here. _Drip_. She could not control anything from down here. _Drip_. She could not cont— _Drip_. Control— _Drip_. Con—

 _Clatter_. The tin bucket knocked over onto its side, seemingly on its own, and the drip water began flooding across the stone floor. The metallic rattle and splash were then immediately followed by a sudden scream—a bloodcurdling _scream_ from down the prison corridor. The disembodied, earsplitting cry accosted Morrible's ears with its atrociousness as it ripped through the wing of cells at an unnaturally loud volume. Startled by the supernatural shriek, the gaunt woman nearly tripped over the sideways bucket as she took several splashy steps backwards until her back came into contact with the opposite wall from the bars, her brittle fingernails clutching at her heart which now beat fitfully at a heightened speed.

The last echoes of the horrendible sound rippled out until a still, eerie silence took its place. Morrible closed her eyes tightly for a long moment before opening them wide in an attempt to better see in the dark. It did very little.

"Urit?" Morrible called hoarsely, her voice betraying a faint quiver. "Urit did you scream?"

No answer.

"URIT!?"

 _Drip_.

Morrible began taking a few unsteady steps forward but stopped her movements as trepidation trickled from the back of her neck down her spine. A heightened sense of discomfort ebbed through her for, while she could still faintly make out the outlines of the bars, the now perfectly noiseless corridor beyond them had no light whatsoever and she could not shake the feeling as she looked out upon it that something unknown, something that she could not see, might be looking right back.

Perhaps to prove—even to herself—that she was not afraid, or perhaps in an effort to not make any sudden movements so as not to provoke whatever had made that noise, Morrible took slow, steady steps towards her cot rather than do as she wished and bound towards it as fast as her weary bones could move. Her skin was alive with horripilation by the time she made her way back to the perceived safety of her cot and she yanked her feet up off the floor as if something might have taken hold of them had she not made such haste.

She caught no more than a few winks of sleep until morning.

The sound of a metal tray sliding under her cell door rose her from her flimsy night's sleep the next morning and she found that the pitch black had been replaced with the cool, jade glow of the daytime lanterns in the hall.

"Mornin', Morrible. I swiped you a muffin," a guard remarked.

Morrible's blurry vision focused on Zeddard, a Ram, who was her new regular guard. She narrowed her eyes at the pathetic tray which contained the usual dry piece of toast and hard-boiled egg as well as a tiny lemon poppyseed muffin.

"I don't want anything that's been touched by your filthy hooves," she said sneeringly. Morrible made a point to never give him the dignity of direct eye contact, besides, his curved horns reminded her vaguely of her former colleague.

"Take it or leave it, I thought you might like a change," Zeddard responded with a shrug.

"Since when does your kind even get to hold a position such as this?" she regarded him condescendingly, stepping out of her cot and stretching her tense muscles. "I never thought I'd live to see an Animal on the Gale Force."

"Well, there's been a regime change," he answered simply. He began slouching off and Morrible called to catch his attention.

"Tell Urit to stop being so loud at night!" she complained petulantly. "It's affecting my sleep."

Zeddard gave her a funny look. "Urit was released yesterday morning…I thought you knew. She told me to tell you that she says goodbye."

Morrible frowned. "Are there other occupied cells then? Perhaps down that way," she pointed a long finger towards the direction she'd heard the— _disturberance_ …the night before.

"Nope. You actually have this whole wing to yourself now. How 'bout that?" Zeddard informed her. "Why do you ask?"

"None of your concern," she hissed under her breath, clinking one of her nails against the iron bar. "It was so… _kind_ of you to bring me breakfast. But do you know what would be even kinder? Let me go outside."

"They warned me about what happened last time…we're still repairing the hail damage. I'm sorry but I can't do that," he informed her with a shake of his head.

"At least _tell_ me what the weather is like," she mumbled in irritation.

"It's sunny, Morrible. Been sunny all week."

The Ram returned to provide lunch and dinner, but besides his brief visits, Morrible was alone. The musty books that her jailers had provided to occupy her mind whilst imprisoned were simple texts that could barely hold her attention, and the absence of Urit's daytime ruckus made the place even more dreadfully quiet than before. So quiet, in fact, that the first vocal click of the lights beginning to go out for the evening seemed more jarring than it had in the past.

Each night the lights went out one by one starting from the far end of the hallway towards Morrible's cell at the end. She stood and moved to stare resolutely down the way with gritted teeth as the greenish hue of the hall was slowly replaced by inky blackness. She would not let the events of last night scare her, being scared of the dark was for children and fools, and Morrible was not a child or a fool.

However, her grit buckled as the darkness egged closer and a sense of foreboding vibrated up her spine when it came nearly time for the final lantern to turn off. Deciding at the very last clock-tick that she didn't wish to be standing so close to the bars when the lights went out, she made sudden hurried strides towards her cot, keen to pull her feet up off the ground before the light was snuffed as if it were a deadline she had to make or else face imminent danger. Morrible landed on her cot and placed the sheet over her legs just in time for the last jade lantern to click off, leaving her quite in the dark…and quite alone.

 _Drip_.

Morrible murmured old incantations under her breath to occupy her mind. Incantations that would do her no good here.

 _Drip_.

Morrible replayed old lesson plans throughout her head.

 _Drip_.

Morrible began counting the drips out loud, deciding to focus in on the sound rather than attempt to block it out.

"Two-hundred and fifteen…" _Drip_. "Two-hundred and sixteen…" _Drip_. "Two-hundred and seventeen…" _Drip_. "Two-hundred and eighteen…" _Drip_. "Two-hundred and nineteen…" _Clang_. "Two-hundred and twenty…" _Clang_. "Two-hundred and twenty-one…" _Clang_.

Morrible paused her counting as her ears picked up a new recurrent sound. A distinct noise was coming from the opposite end of the prison corridor and sounded as if someone were slowly running a wooden object along the iron bars of the cells further down, like a guard might unconsciously do with a nightstick while making rounds. But the sound was anything but unconscious, it was rhythmic and undoubtedly _deliberate_ for each clang sounded in time with Morrible's counting aloud. But there was another sound too, a fainter one than whatever was clanking against the bars, a prolonged brushing sound as if dry, coarse bristles were being dragged in an uninterrupted line across the stone floor. The fine hairs at the back of Morrible's neck stood up and she held her breath as the methodical clanging and the rough dragging grew steadily louder, steadily _nearer,_ until it grew so apparent that the source could be no further than one cell over.

Then…the noise stopped.

One could hear a pin drop in the wing, no clanging, no brushing, no drips—but even so, Morrible got a sense, a powerful and _overwhelming_ sense, one so palpable that, though the physical darkness was too complete to know for certain, she accepted her hunch as honest fact. The sense told her that she was no longer alone in her private wing and that someone was just outside her cell…watching her calmly through the bars.

Without warning—the wooden handle menacingly strummed over the bars of Morrible's cell in quick succession as if they were a xylophone, filling the air with close-proximity clangs as rough bristles squeaked and scratched erratically across the floor like nails against a chalkboard. Morrible's throat let out a panicked screech against her will as horror flooded her body and she clutched the sheet closer to her chin and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. Then—a faint but pronounced cackle sounded just outside of her cell, a tone filled with sadistic amusement and mirth as if entertained by the frightened woman in the cage. Morrible did not dare test her eyes to see if she could spot the source of the laughter through the dark.

The laughter gradually died down and Morrible held her breath as the sweeping and clanging began again at its original metronomic pace back down the corridor from whence it came. The clamors grew softer, but Morrible's sense of hearing seemed sharpened in the dark, and she swore she could hear a soft voice hiss delightedly through the hall.

" _Ring around the rosy…a pocket full of spears…thought you'd be pretty foxy…didn't you_?"

Morrible didn't sleep for the rest of the night.

Relief washed over the former headmistress as the lights flicked on one by one the following morning to grace the hall with its artificial illumination. The troublesomeness of lying awake for hours in the pitch black had disoriented and shaken her greatly, and she jumped to her bony feet the moment she heard hoof steps from down the hall.

"There's somebody here!" she shouted hoarsely as soon as Zeddard came into view. "Somebody walks these halls at night! Who is it!?"

The Ram looked stunned at her reaction, a tray resting atop his hooves.

"Good morning to you too."

He slid the tray under the bars and Morrible saw that there was another poppyseed muffin. Quite unhinged, she took it and threw it out of her cell.

"Get that away from me! I don't need your pity—I need whoever is tormenting me at night to stop it at once!" she screamed.

The Ram stared at her and shook his head with a sigh. "No one has been walking the halls. Could you have dreamed it?"

"No, I didn't _dream_ it, you simple creature! Someone must be doing it! A guard!"

"There is no way to get past us and none of the guards left their post last night. You were the only one down here…"

"Liar! Liar! You lie—you must be lying! Unless, unless…" she faltered, her dried out and bloodshot eyes widening. "No—but it couldn't be _true_!"

"What couldn't be true?" Zeddard asked.

"Get me Glinda! Get me Glinda the Good, I must speak with her," Morrible demanded at once.

"Glinda the Good is a very busy—"

"GET HER DOWN HERE! And get somebody to fix that Ozforsaken drip while you're at it you worthless thing!"

Zeddard cocked his head to the side and gave her a faintly confusified look before shaking his head and heading down the hall. "I'll see you at lunch, Morrible. It's overcast today."

Glinda did not come. Zeddard returned with lunch and dinner, but Morrible did not eat. The trays stayed untouched in the left corner of her cell as she paced back and forth for the better part of the day, bone tired and paranoid. Any time she'd hear anything she'd jump and look through the bars, eyes straining for any glimpse of a blonde ringlet or a fancy wand.

Morrible groaned uneasily under her breath when the first light flicked off that night and she took a few frantic steps towards her cot just before the last light could go out. She closed her eyes as she heard it go out and took a rattling breath, clutching the sheet up near her chin.

"Poppycock," she mumbled to herself. "Utter nonsense."

She was a rational woman, a former educator, a person of renown and respect! Yet here she was, cowering under her covers while cursing her own juvenile fear. She would not let these frights steal another night's sleep.

 _Drip_.

The infernal drip was back. Morrible's eyes opened determinedly and were met with the usual level of dreaded darkness. She fidgeted under the thin sheets, the mattress springs groaning and squeaking as she adjusted herself, and closed her eyes again as she attempted to relax her tensed jaw. _Drip_.

Desperate to get her mind on anything else than that insufferable dripping noise, she began reciting the first thing that came to mind to herself. The Alma Mater hymn from Shiz University.

"O, hallowed halls and vine-draped walls…" she muttered. _Drip_. "The proudliest sight there is." _Drip_.

She ground her teeth so harshly that she could hear them squeak against each other. It felt almost as if her senses could pick up nothing besides the drip.

"When grey and sere our hair hath turned…" she muttered with a hint of dark irony, missing her wigs more than ever. "We shall still revere the lessons—"

 _Drip_.

"The lessons—" _Drip_. "The _lessons_ —" _Drip_. "The lessons learned—" _Drip_.

With a cry of frustration, Morrible leapt out of her cot and stalked towards the corner with the drip. She strained to use her magic again which proved once more to be useless and threw a frustrated hand into the path of the drip. Then, Morrible suddenly howled in alarm as the next droplet of moisture inflicted a searing, burning pain onto her skin as it fell upon her hand. She breathed heavily as she dried her palm off against her nightgown and brushed her fingers over the wound, expecting to find horrendible blisters or sores. Instead, she saw nor felt any wound at all and found that her pain had diminished entirely as if she had never sustained an injury at all.

"HELP! I'M MELTING! PLEASE HELP! I'M MELTING! I'M MELTING! MELTING!" a soul rattling voice screamed so loud it felt as if the creature enduring the suffering was projecting its shrill, agonized screeches straight into Morrible's ear. She scrambled to her cot and cowered in the corner as far up against the wall as she could get, her sore joints aching from her sudden, fearful movements. She lifted her quaking hands to cover her ears as the anguished screams continued to attack her.

"I'M MELTING! MELTING! _MELTING_!"

"STOP!" Morrible cried out.

And it did.

All sound ceased, including the echo from the screams that should have been but were not. Screams that loud should have echoed in a place like this for a long stretch of time, but instead there was nothing…thus—thus proving the screams false! Morrible rubbed her eyes and started looking for the familiar outlines of her cell. The bars came faintly into view, yet there was no threat to be seen.

"Ha!" she laughed unsteadily to herself. "See? It is nothing!"

Prisons made creaking and clanging sounds all of the time…and the mind can play tricks! The _dark_ can play tricks. Facts and studies of hallucinations and sleep deprivation began filtering back into her mind and she sighed in relief at their presence. Yes, these sounds and torments were nothing that could not be explained. It seemed almost laughable now that she had even entertained any fearful notions before! No more. She would not play into these delusions of the night any longer.

Emboldened by the gears of logic cranking in her head, Morrible went as far as to march her shaky legs up to the bars of her cell "These have been nothing more than—than false visions from an overly tired mind!" she triumphantly rationalized out loud.

Madame Morrible had always been able to rationalize anything.

"It'll take more than that to fool me! I am a logical woman and I do not believe in _spooks_!" she proclaimed proudly into the dark.

"What about witches?" the dark spoke back.

Morrible let out a shuddering, choking gasp and her muscles instinctively moved to retreat—but before they could—an unseen force seemed to compel her and her feet shakily moved her forth towards the bars, towards the voice.

"Why, my little party's just beginning _…"_ the dark whispered again.

Her body quivering, her breathing shallow, and her aged heart thudding chaotically, Morrible then made up her mind to do something potentially imprudent. She squeezed her eyes so tightly that it caused her discomfort before flinging them wide open in order to encourage her vision to adjust enough to catch a glimpse of her sinister visitor. Her vision blurred and then sharpened ever so slightly to reveal the vague outline of something lurking in the hall beyond her bars. She could just barely make out the shadowy edges of a tall, cloaked figure standing perfectly still with what appeared to be a hat ending in a high, sharp point sitting atop its head.

"Come closer, dearie…" the figure spoke. Morrible whimpered as she obeyed, seemingly against her will, and swore that she could see a long finger curling inward to beckon her forth.

"Closer, dearie, closer…"

"You're not real. It's not you. You weren't really like this…" Morrible's tremulous voice trailed off. She was so close to her cell door now that the tip of her nose faintly brushed the iron bars. Though she still could not trust her own sight, she realized with dread that the figure's face must now be but a miniscule distance from hers for she could feel a radiation of body heat and a steady breath, which highly contrasted her own panicked wheezes, exhaling composedly upon her wrinkled features.

"But that didn't matter…did it?" the figure whispered. A tense silence pulsated between the two until Morrible's senses perceived an unnaturally wide, sharp toothed smile stretching across the figure's face. " _Boo_."

Overcome with all-consuming terror, Morrible finally stumbled backwards away from the bars as the sound of a high-pitched cackle ambushed her ears.

She knew nothing more until late into the next day.

"Madame Morrible…Madame Morrible!"

A voice calling her name stirred Morrible awake and she found herself sprawled out on her cot. She blearily opened her eyes to see a shimmering sight before her. Standing there in a shiny, layered gown with a tiara atop her polished corkscrew curls stood Glinda the Good.

"Glinda—oh Glinda thank goodness you have come—" Morrible wheezed, scrambling towards the bars in a relieved rush.

The young woman lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes, taking a step away from the bars to keep her distance from the deranged former press secretary.

"Yes, it's good to see me, isn't it? And don't thank me. This was Zeddard's idea, not mine. He insisted that you were quite unwell. What was it that you so desperately needed to talk to me about?" she inquired coldly; her glossed lips pressed into an unimpressed line.

"Glinda—Glinda it's _her_! She walks these halls. She comes down here every night to taunt me—to torture me!" Morrible gasped with wide eyes, her pale fingers clenching around the bars.

"Who comes down here?" Glinda asked flatly.

"You know who I'm talking about!" Morrible hissed.

"Say her name!" Glinda demanded, stamping the end of her long wand on the stone floor.

"ELPHABA!" Morrible proclaimed desperately, pressing her forehead to the cold bars. "It was Elphaba! She's back—she's _here_!"

"So now she's Elphaba?" Glinda rebutted sharply. "After all of these years she's _Elphaba_ again to you?"

"She's—she's—"

"Elphaba is dead!" Glinda asserted with a quivering bottom lip. "She's dead and gone—and you _saw_ to it!"

"But she's not, Glinda! She's not! I—I've seen the outline of her hat! I've heard the brushing of her broom! She laughs! She talks to me!"

"The child melted her with a bucket of water, or don't you remember?" Glinda reminded her.

"But that can't be—that can't _be_! She must have survived. She _must_ have because—because I made it up, Glinda! I made it up! I saw her…I _saw_ her years ago at Shiz standing beneath the rain quite unharmed. All of the rumors were a farce that I created!" Morrible pleaded.

"That's right it was! You spent years putting fear into the heart of every Ozian, telling them to beware of a repulsive, three eyed, skin shedding, soulless monster!" Glinda scolded her harshly. "And all that time, you knew it was a sham."

"But it isn't a sham anymore! It's real! Real as rain! Something with a twisted nature has been haunting me. It's here—a distortion, a repulsion, a—"

"Wicked witch!?" Glinda finished for Morrible furiously. The good witch stared at Morrible heatedly for a long moment before taking a step closer to the bars to stare at her straight in the eye.

"I don't know what has been bothering you at night, Madame, but it isn't Elphaba. Even if she were alive, she wouldn't do that…and I think that even _you_ know that. If you are looking for the thing that's haunting you, if you're looking for something wicked? Perhaps you should try looking inwards. Goodbye, Madame Morrible," Glinda hissed before turning to leave.

"No, don't go!" Morrible yelled hoarsely, reaching an arm out through the bars to beckon desperately towards Glinda. "How do you explain the screams—or the bucket of water in my cell knocking over on its own!?"

Glinda turned and raised a puzzled eyebrow. "What bucket?"

"The blasted bucket in the corner of my cell to catch the drip from the constant rain!" Morrible bellowed irritably, turning around to gesture towards the offending corner. However, no bucket could be found, nor a drip from the ceiling, nor any telltale sign of their existence. The corner was…empty.

"There's been no rain for weeks, Madame Morrible. It's been sunny and dry since your little hail storm. Even if there were rain it could not reach this far down to cause a drip," Glinda informed her.

"But—but that can't be…" Morrible moaned, clamping her hands over the sides of her face. "It was here, the bucket was here. The witch was here!"

"Well, Madame Morrible, you really did do such a fine job of creating a wicked witch…maybe she's just finally come for _you._ "

Glinda's sparkly heels clacked on the stone floor as she glided away down the corridor and Morrible's breath caught as she saw the hallway lights begin to go out one by one as she exited. How long had she been asleep?! The disorientation of not being able to see the sky nor have any control over it sent her panicking. Fear and hopelessness froze her to where she stood at the bars and she could not find it within her to flee towards the safety of her cot before the darkness engulfed her whole.

Left behind in her cage, Madame Morrible cursed her fate. Afraid, wrongfully punished, and alone…she felt sure that nobody in all of Oz had suffered quite as much as her.

As Morrible ruminated on her woes, she hardly registered the feeling of long, green fingers curling over her frail shoulders one by one from behind her until their sharp fingernails clenched inwards to viciously grasp her into their clutches. A wicked whisper, the very same one that had been plaguing her for the past few nights, tickled her ear as it posed a question.

"Tell me, Madame Morrible…how _are_ you faring in captivity?"


End file.
